Kingdom 101: Down Through Time

Let's begin with the Babylonians, when they fell to the Persians. And those who escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia. The Persians allowed the Jews (Israelites) to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple and the city of Jerusalem. Next, the Persians then fell to the Greeks, whose great tradition of philosophy influenced the entire Mediterranean world.

The question arises, Why did the Lord permit them to be enslaved for seventy years? The Lord God gave them a command: “Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed. “And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.

Take a few moments and ready in Leviticus: ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.​You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols; and My soul shall abhor you. I will lay your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas. I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it. I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste. Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths.

As long as it lies desolate it shall rest—for the time it did not rest on your sabbaths when you dwelt in it. ‘And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee; they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues.

They shall stumble over one another, as it were before a sword, when no one pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; also in their fathers’ iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away. ‘But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt—then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.

The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; they will accept their guilt, because they despised My judgments and because their soul abhorred My statutes. Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God.

But for their sake I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.’” This strikingly predicts the captivity, stating how the Lord God's people would be torn from their land for disobeying Him. One of the laws that they had ignored stated that one year in every seven, the land should lie fallow, resting from producing crops. The seventy year captivity allowed the land to rest, making up for all the years the Israelites had not observed this law. Keep in mind, the Lord God's Word is sovereign, meaning that He always keeps His promises--not only His promises of blessing, but also His promises of judgment.

As time went on, the Greek Empire fell to the Romans, with their genius for military campaigns, laws and government administration. At last, the time for which the Lord God had been preparing drew near. Please note: The Roman Empire was the first in history with a structure and administration that resembled the Kingdom of God. Keep in mind, it had to be in the Lord God's own time. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Unlike the empires that preceded it, when the Romans invaded and conquered a nation and country, it set up its own administration with its own governor appointed by the emperor or king, but left the indigenous people in the land. Rome governed its conquered territory through appointing representatives with the same mindset--mentality, who ruled with the authority of the governing emperor (or king). The job of a Roman governor was to govern his province in such a way as to make it a reflection of Rome.

The stage was now set to bring the King to restore and recover the Kingdom.